Chapter 42 #4
I let him see all that in my face, let him hear the rumble in my throat as his yearning becomes evident against my thigh. I make myself bend toward him and run my nose along his jaw. He trembles.
“Such a meal I would have made of you,” I purr into his ear. I keep my eyes on the glass behind him, even as I slide my hand to the curve of his ass to make my point abundantly clear. “If only you would have waited for me. I would have caught up to you eventually, you know.”
I move my head to slot my lips against his.
A drop of sweat tracks down the back of my neck as he mewls gently into my mouth, and I remind myself to be like Eliot, to summon up every true feeling I could have had for Adam, and I also keep my eyes on the glass.
Which is why I see, the moment I flick my tongue against my betrayer’s and feel his hips jolt wildly, the reflection of movement behind me.
I duck just as Veronica’s knife arcs toward my back, dropping to a knee and turning as she rights herself and strikes again.
Adam is stupefied, I think, kissed senseless, which is something that at any other time I’d feel proud of and right now I can only feel grateful for.
I manage to land a kick on Veronica’s stomach, sending her back a few feet, and then I take off like a sprinter from both hands and a bent knee, scrambling down the row and then careening sideways at the first aisle so I can scramble toward the edge. Toward the elevator and Tristan.
She’s fast though, faster than I plan on, and I go crashing into a server case as she slams against me.
I manage to catch her wrist before she strikes out with the knife, and my hands are sweaty, and her wrist is sweaty, and we’re frozen for a split second as I try to wrest the blade away from her even though I’m at the worst angle to do so.
“Should have brought a gun,” I say breathlessly. I’m stronger than her, but like Isolde, she knows how to twist and squirm in such a way that my strength is matched.
“Didn’t want to risk the servers,” she says back just as breathlessly.
Adam clears the corner but hesitates. Veronica is a pro—she doesn’t look over at him but she knows he’s there.
“Father,” she bites out. “Help.”
I can take both of them, especially since Adam is unarmed, but the odds will be much, much worse, and Jesus fucking Christ, what is the point of all these fans and inert gas fire suppression systems if a room full of servers doesn’t actually overheat even when you try to make them?
I abruptly let go of Veronica’s wrist, causing her to sway backward, and bring my hand down as hard as I can against the vulnerable tributary of her radial nerve.
It’s a basic move and an ugly one, but the crude defense works.
Her hand spasms, weakens momentarily, long enough for the weapon to clatter free and spin on the floor.
The three of us dive for the knife—my knees hit the floor, and sweat burns my eyes—and then fucking finally the sound of overheated glass cracks through the air. Flames ripple up to the ceiling like there’s a race, bright orange and licking.
So the servers can overheat after all. Great!
I abandon the knife and decide to tear away to the elevator when I hear a clank and hum, and the treasury’s security walls start to whirr down to the floor, something that would trap all three of us in here with the fire.
I’d rather be sewn into a bag of cats and thrown into the river.
I run, feeling fingers just graze my shirt, and I’m almost to the walls, watching them rattle sedately toward the ground, when I’m grabbed, tripped, and then?—
Pain.
Gut-deep pain.
I’m on the ground with a knife wedged into my side. The metal walls are all the way down. Smoke is gathering on the ceiling.
I’ve lost some time…twenty seconds, maybe thirty. From the pain, I think, because I can breathe; it’s just excruciating. I’m on my back, and I’m looking up at Adam, not Veronica.
The fire is loud. Cracking glass and plastic.
It will probably jump server cases, and the continuing heat won’t help.
I turned off the fire suppression systems when I turned off the cooling mechanisms. I don’t remember the metal walls being part of the fire suppression plan, but then again, I zoned out a little during Dinah’s last fire safety training session, so my not remembering doesn’t mean much.
The hilt of the knife is still sticking out of the left side of my abdomen, the blade entirely buried.
I am going to die down here, but Adam and Veronica will die down here too.
The only remaining question is if Tristan will be safe in the grotto, and I don’t have any answer for that.
We’re in a tinderbox of cables and lithium batteries; it could take the whole club with it by the end.
“Looks like we’re going down together,” I choke out to Adam. “A shame. I’m sure the Scales would have been so proud of you.”
Adam’s pale brows lift, as if I’ve surprised and disappointed him. “Mr. Trevena, I am the Scales.”
I stare at him. My pain-drenched mind refuses to believe it.
“His Eminence asked me very soon after I took my vows. The last Scales had died, and the cardinal needed someone he could trust, and not just with the work of the saints but his own private work with Ys.” Adam’s expression is one of pity now.
“All that time you spent looking for me, and I was right here, just waiting for you to notice.”
Veronica emerges from the glow, her face shining with sweat.
“How do we get out of here?” she asks sharply. “I know you know of a way.”
“I don’t, actually,” I wheeze, then laugh at how little I apparently know my own club, and then scream after laughing. I think that knife is impaling my actual soul, it hurts that fucking much.
Veronica’s eyes glint, and she steps forward—to hasten my death or prolong it, I don’t know—and then there’s a blur. Pearl-haired, in a sweatshirt.
Veronica goes flying, landing on her back and sliding a few feet away, and I drag in an agonizing lungful of air when I realize.
Isolde.
Isolde is here.
There’s more fighting. A scream. I try to get up, try to move at all, but darkness ripples over my vision, and I collapse back in nauseous torment.
And then Isolde is kneeling next to me. There’s blood on her face, and her honeysuckle knife is in her hand. The flames behind her look like a saint’s halo. A real saint. The kind on a holy card. “Mark,” she whispers.
I lift a hand to her face. She is everything beautiful in the world.
“The terminal,” I manage again. “Might be a way to lift the walls. Get out while you can.”
She leans down to kiss me briefly on the lips and then says, “I’m sorry, but I won’t do it without you. You can take it out on me later.”
I have no idea what she means until she stands up, grabs my wrists, and then starts dragging me to the nearest terminal.
I think I scream again, I don’t know, because the pain also wrenches the breath from my body, and I lose another chunk of time, coming woozily awake as Isolde is typing at the terminal’s keyboard, the air acrid with smoke.
“Veronica?” I ask her with whatever voice I have left.
“Dead,” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen.
“Sedge—Adam?”
“Don’t know. How do I lift the walls?”
I tell her haltingly—fadingly—my best guess, but even the pain is slipping between my fingers now, along with my focus.
“ Tristan ,” I manage to say. “In the grotto. You have to—Isolde!”
My warning comes just in time for Isolde to turn to see Adam. Every inch of his skin glistens with sweat now, his hair has been torn from its neat bun, and there’s blood on his hands that I don’t think is his.
“At last we get to meet truly, Isolde,” Adam says. He puts a polite, bloody hand to his chest. “The Scales. It’s a pleasure.”
A million emotions flit through Isolde’s face just then—everything from shock to anger to hurt—but then the emotions fall away, leaving nothing but determination behind.
With a single graceful motion, the honeysuckle knife is flashing in the light of the fire. Father Adam falls to the floor before he can utter a single other syllable, not even a prayer.
His eyes, by the time I can see them, are completely without life.
Isolde is back at the keyboard, and then after a few more keystrokes, she drops to her knees next to me. She gives me another kiss.
“Hang on just a minute, sir.”
Ah, that sir . Almost as good as the air it hurts too much to breathe right now. I’m smiling into her mouth as the darkness finally swallows me whole.
And the last thing I hear above the spitting, hissing mess of the fire is a whirr of metal and unseen motors. The walls are coming back up.
I open my eyes to a blue sky with puffy white clouds. There’s a gentle breeze washing mild air over me—a fool’s spring, my grandfather would say. I hear the hungry roar of a structure fire and, distantly, sirens.
I roll my head on the grass to see Isolde kneeling next to me, and Tristan too.
“Sir,” Tristan says. He’s crying. Isolde is crying too. “Hang on just a little longer.”
I press a shaking hand to Isolde’s cheek before it drops away. “You came back,” I whisper.
“I came back.”
“Why?”
Through her tears, she laughs, that rare laugh that should be kept in a tabernacle and venerated on feast days. “Because I love you. Because I choose to. Because I don’t want to play the game with you anymore.”
Sparks and static frill the edges of my vision; the sirens are so loud . In front of us, the club has started to energetically burn, flames licking at the inside of the glass like tongues of fire.
My eyes slide closed. I don’t think I can last much longer.
Warm lips find my mouth—another pair, firm and with the rasp of stubble, finds my cheek. Worshipful. Heart-melting.
“I’ve already lost the game,” I mumble as I listen to my life’s work burn to the ground, as the internal blood loss pulls—and pulls— and pulls —at my pulse.
I manage to fumble Isolde’s hand in the direction of my pocket, and I feel her fingers close around the crystal chess piece I carry with me always. “You win, Isolde. I want you to win.”
“And I have,” says Isolde into our kiss, and I can hear the fear and love and stubbornness in her voice. “But I’m taking mercy on you anyway.”
Mercy.
But this is mercy too, to have both of them with me, both of them close, and it is the opposite of my dream all those weeks ago, the opposite of standing between their graves in a wretched and desolate garden. This is them alive and together, the way it should be, the way I planned for it to be.
No bitter ending, no tragedy—only the villain dead and the lovers together at last.
The greatest mercy I could grant them, I think.
And it’s not the glass-cracking blaze of the fire or the wail of sirens that follow me into the deep, but the kisses of my beloveds—as sweet as the first time I ever felt them, as necessary as air and blood.
I hope if they ever stand above my grave, they know that I died in love with them, happy for them, relieved.
More than anything, I hope they know I died wishing that I could kiss them back.